Here is my pretty much complete Timurids-Mughal game for
Sweet Home Qaraqorum, going for some other goals on the way.
I have completely annexed Ming, unified India and most of Asia, and I finished with a complete victory over the Ottomans.
You may notice that I have a pretty solid pile of money (I could probably keep playing to break my moneycap record by A LOT). It's the first time I accumulate that kind of income that early, especially that
insane production income before I have furnaces.
How is that? Well, I rushed for a very specific area of the map very early in the game and decided to make it my capital.
That's the most accessible European area. It basically allowed me to make most of my country into TC for most of the game.
I've built literally all the money-making Trade Company Investments, and all the Manufactories and Counting Houses. Even in wool and grain provinces, they are extremely valuable with the investments boosting production.
I have two states in India giving me more than 20 ducats of monthly income (so just production and tax, not counting the 1000 ducats I collect in Persia).
That's not even an optimal expansion, I don't have Malacca because they are a good ally and I did not bother building a navy. I'm missing on quite a lot of trade income because I lose part of the Chinese trade (I still get quite a lot from the northern route from Beijing to Yumen and Samarkand) and all of the Indochinese one.
Obviously, the other massive use of TCs is to completely bypass the new restriction to territories (TCs are not territories, they don't add corruption).
I have 95 Trade Company Areas, so it's just my last and final war against the Ottomans that started giving me corruption despite my massive Empire (I also took all the possible +States ideas and reforms).
I'm pretty much ignoring overextension. I have Humanist, and the Humanist/Offensive policy giving even less Years of Separatism. I actually did not even know that the Mughals had 10% admin efficiency as a reward for a mission (courtesy of not having been in the forums for a while). That's
completely stupid. With Iqta government, Admin, Mughal traditions and Hindvi culture assimilated I core in a year, and with Diplomatic and that 75% admin efficiency I can take stupid amounts of land in a war and I don't have any revolts. I fully annexed Ming in barely 15 years as soon as I got Imperialism by using their tributaries to dodge truces.
That's obviously prime WC material, even despite that stupid corruption (I'm already almost unable to root it, I'd reach the point where you gain corruption faster than you can root it after my next war, that would be against Russia).
I had not had the opportunity to fully experience all the broken features of the last patches, and it's even worst that I thought.
Because I did not want (and could not) expand too fast before uniting TC land and getting Imperialism, and because I started so strong as the Timurids, I also decided to completely avoid building a single merc and to rely on professionalism for once.
With 100% professionalism, basically 100 AT and 125% discipline, I have completely broken quality on top of everything. And I rolled a 6 siege general during that Ottoman war

.
I did a pretty standard Mughals game. I just unified the Persian node to get a powerbase, and rushed to form it asap.
I allied the Ottomans one month into the game, and kept them for 200 years. Besides that, you can see that Biapas is a vassal (transferring trade to me so that I already controlled all of Persian node), and that I used Jaunpur and Malwa to crack India.
I kept the Ottomans just to deter coalitions while I ate India, but I never called them into anything. I've been a good and loyal friend and I had vassals helping them in their wars, so I had accumulated quite the trust before backstabbing them.
I got an early border with Ming but I let them be while I ate India to avoid having outraged countries in too many religious groups before I was strong enough.
Overall that was a very conservative campaign, which also explains my stupidly high amount of money. My primary goal was to abuse TCs and to get filthy rich. The map painting is a necessary consquence.
Europe was extremely interesting:
I don't want to comment too much. It's enough to say pretty much everything here is rare and beautiful. I had literally no impact in that (except maybe Austria eating some of the Ottomans, because they called me in offensive wars twice and I sat idle watching them lose).
You could think that that Prussia is a beautiful thing. They are the only country with more quality than me, and they successfully lead the Protestant League to victory. But as it happens, they fell in a PU under Tuscany which Austria unsuccessfully contested in a climactic war spanning all over Europe where the Ottomans intervened to save Tuscany from Austria and Russia.
Finally, here are the Force Limits. Keep in mind that besides that disloyal Prussia, everyone melts in front of me.
Remind me the downsides of Trade Companies? Lower Force Limit and manpower? Omegalul. If I was using mercs and was willing to go over FL I could run around with 2 million men and I would still make money.